Hey there ev'r'n'. So here's what I'm gon' do now. I'm gonna translate Over Heaven. There's a couple reasons for this. For one, some of the ideas within it are mentioned in Jorge Joestar. So you could consider it to come earlier in the series. Though really, it's not like you need to read it in order to understand what's going on in that. The second thing is this book's really easy to translate. It's 309 pages long and made up of 80 really short chapters which usually comprise of 2-5 pages. And the language is much more straightforward and easy to understand compared to The Book because it's written in the form of diary entries. On top of that, the text is in a much bigger font and the margins are much bigger. Similar to what I'm doing with The Book, I'm just gonna work on this when I have time or I feel like it. But I've already read this book and it's not too complicated and there are scans of it online so I didn't have to scan it myself, so I can do a lot more with much less effort.

I talked about some of the other books in my post for translating The Book, which I'm still working on as of now. You can read that here:viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5260

Now, with regards to the book itself. For those that don't know, it's written by NisiOisin, the terrible writer that brought us the monstrosity that is Medaka Box. This book came out in December of 2011. The book is made up of short diary entries all written from the perspective of Dio. It's written (in the story) during the course of the events of Part 3. Dio slowly recants his personal history including the events of part 1, and what was going through his mind during it. And he also comments on the events of part 3 chronologically as they occur. So he discusses the various characters and takes a sort of philosophical tone analyzing it all. He picks apart people's motives and potential and his own perspective on them, like how they relate to him. The book's theme is "going to heaven" which is touched upon a bit in Part 6 as a will Pucci succeeded from Dio, and eventually fulfilled (according to him) when he got Made in Heaven. Dio constantly goes back to this idea of "going to heaven" and understanding what it means. That's his primary goal he's trying to achieve during Part 3.

So, largely this book is just a chronicling of the events of Parts 1 and 3. It mentions a few things from part 6 regarding Pucci and maybe one or two events we hear about in parts 2 and 5 that relate to Dio. As a result, the book doesn't have much originality to it. The vast majority comes off as stuff anyone could have figured out just from reading the manga, I feel. There's very little it goes through that we haven't already seen. However Nisio Ishin does do a good job of writing Dio's character through all of it, and definitely seemed dedicated to making sure everything relating to Dio was covered. There are a few places where unique perspectives Dio has are mentioned, like what he thinks of various Stands, or things he wishes he could do but wasn't able to. The problem is very little of the book is about that. There are no detailed explanations of the goings-on on Dio's side during Part 3 or anything like that. Not beyond what's involved with Dio directly. Anyhow, I think it's still worth reading if you're a fan of Jojo (So that's anyone reading this). I'd certainly be interested to hear anyone's opinions on it. Though at least we can all agree it's better than Medaka Box. He could've written 無駄無駄無駄 for 300 pages and it'd be better than fucking Medaka Box. Way better.

Since this is my first post, I guess I'll mention what I thought about the first part I translated. The forward is actually pretty interesting, and it's written in a much more formal and flowery way than is the rest of the book. That's because it's written by the guy who decoded Dio's notebook. Kinda interesting, as it's one of the parts of the book that's original. But it's only a few pages long and it's never touched on again. It basically just works as an introduction to this book, that it's the secret book written by Dio, the evil scary guy, and it's where he wrote down his thoughts.

Much more interesting, I think, is chapter 1. Which is the longest chapter I think. That chapter's really got the bulk of the original content of this book in it. It talks about Dio's childhood before the events of Part 1. And it sets in the idea of "going to heaven" which is the theme of this book. If you want some kind of explanation of why Dio is the way he is and thinks the way he does in JJBA, it's in this section. It describes the shitty environment he was in as a child and his mental process during it. Though Dio also contemplates a bit later on if, as Speedwagon said, he's just naturally evil. Really, this chapter's probably the best chapter in the book because it's actually very insightful. Much more so than most of the book. He comes back to some of the ideas in this chapter a lot. So I wanted to make sure for the first post here I had that much done. Let me know what you think every/anyone.

For my own personal use, or if anyone cares, I'm going to write out a table of contents here so you can keep track of where I'm up to more easily. The last page of the book with text in it is 309.

Updates:(2/16/13) Started. I did the forward and chapter 1.(2/19/13) Did chapter 2.(2/21/13) Did chapter 3.(2/24/13) Did chapter 4.(2/26/13) Did chapters 5 and 6.(3/20/13) Did chapter 7.(4/5/13) Did chapter 8.(4/27/13) Did chapter 9.(5/27/13) Did chapter 10.(6/1/13) Did chapter 11 and 12.(6/8/13) Did chapter 13.(6/17/13) Did chapter 14.(6/29/13) Did chapter 15.(7/17/13) Did chapter 16.(7/29/13) Did chapter 17.(8/9/13) Did chapter 18.(9/29/13) Did chapters 19-20.(10/7/13) Did chapter 21.(12/5/13) Did chapter 22.(12/13/13) Did chapter 23.(12/14/13) Did chapter 24.(12/18/13) Did chapter 25.(12/19/13) Did chapter 26-29.(12/20/13) Did chapter 30-31.(12/22/13) Did chapter 32-33.(12/23/13) Did chapter 34.(12/24/13) Did chapter 35.(12/29/13) Did chapter 36-39.(12/30/13) Did chapter 40-41.(12/30/13) Did chapter 42-44.(1/1/14) Did chapter 45-50.(1/2/14) Did chapter 51-54.(1/3/14) Did chapter 55-63.(1/4/14) Did chapter 64.(1/5/14) Did chapter 65-67.(1/6/14) Did chapter 68-70.(1/8/14) Did chapter 71-72.(1/9/14) Did chapter 73-74.(1/10/14) Did chapter 75.(1/11/14) Did chapter 76-78.(1/12/14) Did chapter 79-80 and the Afterward.(2/27/14) Released edited/finished version.

The translation's all done and finalized. It's available right here:http://hiwamatanoboru.com/2014/02/27/jo ... er-heaven/It's a zip file that contains Over Heaven in .txt, .pdf, .mobi, and .epub format. Hope you guys enjoy it! I'm going to be going back to working on The Book: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure 4th Another Day soon. Buddy Waters has finished translating Purple Haze Feedback available here: http://www.nyaa.se/?page=view&tid=489811and he's now working on Jorge Joestar. I'll see where I am when The Book is done and maybe I'll try to do some of the other books (I'm not gonna make any promises now, because that's really a lot of work and I won't be at the point where I could even start for quite a while. I have a tendency to take on waaay too many projects at once and then have trouble finishing them). There are 2 old novels from when Part 3 and Part 5 were running (Not part of the JOJO VS thing with these recent novels) and there were also 2 books written by Araki about his influences. One about horror movies and one about his favorite movies. There're also a bunch of interviews that haven't been translated. So there's no dirth of untranslated stuff that needs translating. If anyone wants to work on any of those things, post it in the forums and I'm sure you'll have the full support of the community.

Last edited by Kewl0210 on Sun Mar 02, 2014 5:17 pm, edited 71 times in total.

I don't like any of Nisio Isin works, but if Over Heaven is good, I can make an exception. .And being shorter than The Book, I'll probably read from the very start of the translation I'm still waiting some more time until I start The Book.

First off, big thanks to Kewl210 for the translation job. Really appreciate the work you've pun in for this. Now for the nitty gritty -- not exactly liking NisiOisin's retcon of how Dio looked at his father. He couldn't even stand that they were related, let alone think that his dad was ever 'cool'. Hopefully, later monologues will clear this up.

Appreciate the work you're putting into this Kewl. I'm loving this book so far as it touches upon certain characters that we essentially had no information on. I was actually interested in learning more about Dio's Mother; she had like, what, 3 panels in the manga? For someone to have given birth to the ultimate villain, you'd think we'd know something about her. I haven't read Medaka Box, so I'm not familiar with the author, but I'm going to hope the rest turns out just as good.

I'm expecting for Nisio Isin to explain more about Dio's parents, because Dio showed he truly respected his mother and he hated his father in the very first chapter of PB. Seeing Dio talking "good" things about his father was strange at first, but he might change this idea in the next chapters.

So I was bored waiting for like 4 people to not do their jobs today, so I translated chapter 2. In this chapter, we learn all about Dio's favorite foods and what he liked to do on weekends as a child. The answers are "anything" and "not die".

No, mostly it's sort of a psychoanalysis of his mother and a bit more of a discussion on what he means when he says "go to heaven".

I translated chapter 3 last night when the forum was upgrading so I couldn't post any update.In this chapter Dio states how he longs for a "true friend". No clue who that might be. Maybe Iggy? And how he's just a poor soul with many obstacles in his way to reaching his one and only goal which is "getting to heaven".